Loose ends

17.

Max and Liz waited, hiding behind the ice machine, until Morton and the unnamed scientist hurried out of their motel room, looking nervous and sweaty. They piled into the blue Chevy and zoomed away from the parking bt, presumably heading for the Denny's on the other side of the highway. Michael's anonymous phone call had obviously done the trick, just as they'd planned. Max counted softly to five, then looked at Liz with concerned, caring eyes. "Ready?" he asked her tenderly.

As III ever be, Liz thought, nodding once. Her heart was ticking faster than a Geiger counter at Los Alamos, and she felt another panic attack scratching at the back door of her mind. The memory of the shooting tormented her, so that she could practically smell the gunpowder again, hear the two men's dishes crash to the floor only heartbeats before Morton's wild gunshot left her bleeding on the floor. Not again, she prayed, reliving the dreadful moment for maybe the thousandth time. Please don't let it happen again! "You can always wait with Maria and Alex," Max reminded her, giving her one last chance to back out. Their friends were parked in the Jetta several yards away, at the far end of the Motel 6's parking lot, ready just in case she and Max had to make a speedy getaway.

"No," she told him, shaking her head. A tremor in her voice betrayed her unsettled emotions. "Lets go."She closed her eyes to compose herself, then looked up at Max as he rose behind the ice machine and hustled toward room #19. She followed close behind him, focusing on Maxs comforting presence as an antidote to the violent specters plaguing her memory. The shooting wasn't a completely negative experience, she reminded herself as they scurried together down the walkway in front of the motel. If not for that alarming brush with death, Max Evans would have never entered her life in such a profound and unforgettable way. We turned that near- fatal moment into a new beginning, she remembered. I just have to have faith that we can do that again A do not disturb sign hung on the door to #19, but that didn't stop Max, who only had to lay his hand upon the doorknob to release the lock. The two teens looked around quickly, to ensure no one was watching, then slipped into the room, closing the door rapidly behind them.

The curtains were closed, to hide Morton's nefarious dealings from the world, so the room was dark and murky. Liz reached automatically for the light switch, but Max grabbed her wrist, shaking his head. Instead he raised his right hand and concentrated for a second; within moments, a silver glow emanated from his outstretched fingers, illuminating the modest motel room.

"Look," he whispered, pointing toward the corner table, where a portable laboratory had been assembled, complete with test tubes, slides, graduated cylinders, Bunsen burner, microscope, laser apparatus, titration setups, ammeter, spectroscope, bottles of chemical catalysts, and even a Geiger counter. Max headed straight for the table, throwing his personal spotlight onto the impressive array of equipment. "This has to belong to that science guy," he assumed. "The one from Las Cruces."Liz inspected the miniature lab, feeling a twinge of envy. All the instruments were state-of-the-art, and in much better condition than Roswell High's well- worn and frankly antiquated lab supplies. "Looks like he's conducting some sort of chemical analysis," she guessed from the arrangement of the equipment. She looked over die hardware curiously, being careful not to break or rearrange anything. "Probably metallurgical or mineralogical."Max gave her an admiring gaze. "Good thing you came along," he said. "As a bona fide space alien, I should be embarrassed that you know more about science than I do." They exchanged amused smiles before getting back down to business. "Last night at the canyon, Morton told Ramirez that he needed to authenticate the 'merchandise' before he gave the lieutenant the rest of his payment." He nodded at the tableful of lab equipment. "That must be what this is all about."Makes sense, Liz. agreed. "But where exacdy is the merchandise?" Although all the scientific instrumentation was on full display, there was no sign whatsoever of what was being tested. Funny, she thought, you'd think there would be some samples of the test subject lying around.

"Good question," Max said. Turning away from the mini-lab, he swept the rest of the room with a wide beam of lambent silver light, Liz kept her eye out for the infamous black attache case, but all she saw was the ungodly mess that Morton and his cohort had managed to make of the motel room. Beer cans, Domino's pizza boxes, and empty two-liter bottles of Coke littered the carpet, while the ashtrays were overflowing with stubbed-out cigarette butts. Sleazy porno magazines, some of them looking unbelievably gross, were piled on the end table between the two beds, which looked like they hadn't been made in days. The air-conditioned atmosphere, although pleasantly cool compared to the torrid heat outside, reeked of tobacco and dirty laundry, do not disturb, Liz recalled, guessing that no maid had seen the inside of the room since Morton and his techie buddy moved in.

Guess they take their privacy seriously, she concluded. No surprise. Apparently such concerns extended to hiding the briefcase, too; Max's searchlight probed every cluttered comer of the trashed motel room without falling upon the luggage they sought. Emm, Liz thought, if I was a briefcase full of extraterrestrial contraband, where would I be? Playing a hunch, she got down on her hands and knees and peeked under the nearest bed. At first, all she saw was darkness, but then Max crouched behind her, flooding the space between the bed and the floor with his incandescent ray of light. Liz's eyes lit up as well when she spotted a matte-black case right in front of her. "Oh my God, Max, there it is!"Eagerly, she yanked the attache case out from beneath the bed and dropped it onto the dirty, disheveled sheets. It was surprisingly light; whatever was hidden inside obviously didn't weigh very much. The clasp was locked, naturally, so Liz stepped aside to permit Max to perform his telekinetic magic. The lock came open with a click and Liz held her breath, half-expecting to find frozen alien embryos within the mysterious case.

Instead they found several torn and ragged sheets of a strange, silvery metal foil, folded meticulously to fit within the shallow confines of the case. Carefully, almost reverendy Max removed one sheet from the case and spread it out atop the bed, where it was revealed to be about the size of a large pillow case. Once laid flat, each and every crease in the foil disappeared completely, so that it looked as though it had never been folded at all. Max tugged on one corner of the sheet, experimentally trying to tear off a small piece, but the exotic material resisted his increasingly strenuous efforts, remaining stubbornly intact and unrumpled. Liz had to marvel at whatever cataclysmic forces must have been required to have torn apart these sheets in the first place.

"Liz," Max whispered in an awestruck tone. "Do you realize what this is?" The metallic sheet reflected the starry radiance shining from his upraised hand, casting an effulgent glow over the entire scene. "This is the same unbreakable stuff that Captain Carver found at the Crash site in '47, that he showed to Michael back in October."Liz nodded, understanding. The retired air force pilot, now deceased, had given Michael an eyewitness report of the Crash and its hectic aftermath, and had shown him a much smaller sample of a very similar material, which Carver had covertly pocketed at the debris field over fifty years ago. She gazed at the unearthly material in wonder. It was amazing to realize that, more likely than not, they were looking at an actual piece of the alien spacecraft that had brought Max and die others to Earth so many years ago. How many light-years had this ragged leaf of foil traveled? she marveled.

To confirm his suspicions, Max picked up the sheet and crumpled it into a small ball, about half the size of his fist. He placed the ball back atop the bed, and he and liz watched in amazement as the compressed wad of foil automatically unfolded itself, so that, within seconds, the sheet once more laid flat upon the bed, looking as pristine and unwrinkled as before.

Max and Liz exchanged knowing looks. This tendency to reassume its original form, even when folded or compacted, was highly characteristic of the unearthly materials found after the Crash, according to Michael, Carver, and any number of alleged witnesses from '47. "It's true," Max gasped, delicately touching the silver foil as though it were a sacred relic. "This is from the Crash!"No wonder there were no test samples aver by the lab equipment, liz realized, impressed by the alien material's preternatural resilience and durability; the poor science guy probably hasn't been able to break off a single piece of the sheet for testing purposes. "The air force must be experimenting with this stuff at White Sands," she deduced. Although the details were top secret, everyone knew that the Pentagon tested new aircraft and missile systems at the nearby base. "That must be how Lieutenant Ramirez managed to get his hands on this stuff."But what does Morton want with it?" Max wondered, sorting quickly through the rest of the samples in the black briefcase. There were also fragments, Liz saw, of an almost weightless tan substance, as smooth as plastic, that, based on Max's tentative attempts to bend or break them, were just as invulnerable as the silver foil. These smaller fragments were embossed with cryptic pink and purple hieroglyphics that bore a striking resemblance to the obscure petroglyphs she and Max had once found in a cave outside River Dogs Indian reservation, markings made by Nasedo decades before Max and the other human-alien hybrids emerged from their pods. The tan-colored fragments, Liz knew, also gibed with testimony given by others involved in the Crash investigation back in 1947. (You didn't grow up in Roswell, New Mexico, without picking up a thorough grounding in basic UFO lore.) "He probably intends to sell it to the highest bidder," she guessed. "Even without the Roswell connection, which might appeal to wealthy UFO enthusiasts, materials like these-lightweight, indestructible-would be worth millions if they could be duplicated. We could be talking industrial espionage here, never mind foreign governments that might want to find out what the U.S. is up to at White Sands." She couldn't resist wadding up the sheet herself, just to watch it unfold miraculously once more. "One way or another, Max, we're talking big money here."Money enough to kill far, she thought somberly. A shiver ran through her as she realized that the huge potential payoff inherent in these artifacts was almost surely what must have ignited Morton's violent outburst in the Crashdown way back when. I almost died for these fragments, she acknowledged, but, for once, she managed to keep the post-traumatic flashbacks at bay; it helped somehow to be using her brain to unravel the mystery. The mad, unreasoning panic was still there, prowling around at the back of her mind, poised to overwhelm her sanity and intellect once more, yet she felt a little less like a victim now that she was finding out for herself what the shooting had been all about. It was no longer just a random, meaningless act of violence, but part of a larger conspiracy whose outline was rapidly becoming clearer.

She peeked quickly at her watch, unsure how much longer Maria and the others would be able to keep Morton and his pet PhD occupied. Almost ten minutes had passed already, so she and Max had to be running out of time. "We've got to go," she warned Max, whose fascination with the alien wreckage, however understandable, might have conceivably overcome his instinct for self- preservation. "And we've got to take this stuff with us."Are you sure?" Max asked, even as he refolded the silver sheet and placed it back in the briefcase with the rest of the debris. "Morton will know we've been here if his so-called 'merchandise' disappears."I don't care, Max," she stated, feeling more decisive and certain of her judgment than she had since running madly out of that underground gift shop the day before. "What if Morton really is planning to sell these samples to a hostile country?" She touched Max's hand gingerly, hoping she could make him understand. "I know you and Michael and Isabel have little reason to trust the federal government, especially after the way they tortured you in that white room, but I'm still an American, Max, and I can't just let Joe Morton sell our secrets to gods know who!"To her relief, Max did not challenge her patriotic concerns. "That's fine, Iiz," he told her without hesitation. He closed the lid of the attache case and locked the clasp. "You're right. I don't like the idea of this technology falling into the wrong hands, either." He gave her a joking smile as he lifted the case by its handle, easily managing its weight. "Just don't ask me to personally hand-deliver this package back to the army boys at White Sands."I was thinking maybe Area 51 instead," she teased him right back. She couldn't believe how good it felt to smile again, to indulge in a bit of playful repartee with the boy she loved. Suddenly, she was very glad that she had summoned the courage to break-and-enter along with Max. This was just what she'd needed to get over her pathological fear of Joe Morton and his gun.

Now we just need to get out of here, she decided, heading for the door, before he gets back.